Peter Pan's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The frost off Gretel's staff still stung Peter's palm hours later. He had reached for her future and been thrown back like a leaf. Her magic knew him. It answered before she even chose to defend herself. He could not take what he could not touch. So he went to the one person who knew how his daughter's defense was made. He went to the sea. Ursula waited in her drowned cathedral, seated among coral and the bones of sunken ships. She was Peter's estranged wife, and she had once told him he'd given away his own heart. She did not rise when he entered. "You smell like her frost," she said. "You found the girl." "She won't let me near," Peter said. "Her staff throws me back. I can't reach the future if I can't reach her." Ursula turned a small pearl over in her fingers. "She learned that ward from me. Years ago. Before you forgot us." Her voice stayed flat. "It reads intent. The moment you want to take, it wakes." "Then how do I blunt it?" "You don't fight the ward. You feed it a lie." She held out the pearl. "This carries a voice I took long ago. A mother's, singing. Warm intent. Hold it, and the ward reads warmth instead of hunger. It will let you close." Peter reached for the pearl. Ursula closed her hand. "There's a price," she said. "The pearl only holds warmth if it has warmth to hold. It needs a true feeling, given by the one who carries it." She looked at him without softening. "You gave yours away. So you'll give the last thing you have of us instead. The name you called me. Not the title. The name." Peter went still. He had traded his memory of her door to the Hatter. This was less and more. A single word. He tried to find it and felt it there, small and warm, the only warm thing left in him. "Say it into the pearl," Ursula said. "Then it's gone. You keep the tool. You lose the word." He thought of Gretel's bright, unfinished life. He thought of the reign the prophecy would end. Then he leaned close and spoke the name into the pearl. It left him the way heat leaves a stone at night. He could not remember it a breath later. Only that it had been sweet. Ursula opened her hand. The pearl glowed faint pink. "Now it lies for you," she said. "Go close to her. She'll feel a mother's warmth and lower the staff." Peter took the pearl. It hummed against his skin, warm where he was cold. He had the key to reach his daughter now. He turned toward the surface without thanking her. "Peter," Ursula said. He looked back. "The warmth runs out. Use it once." She did not tell him what waited when it did.